Mages, ten-man raiding, and other things that are awesome.

There are some things that only die-hard fellow achievement hunters will understand.

"Oh yay I got an achievement for /hugging all the murlocs of Azeroth! I get a Slimy Arms title and a new murloc pet - which I already have, but this one is cyan, and my other one is kind of an aqua..."

Or, as Ghostcrawler put it, “We’ve found that if we put ridiculous things in the game, players will do them.”

That’s why I’m still trying to get the rare drop mounts that are going away. Note, not all of these ARE going away, they are mounts I’m trying to get.

For the record:

Raptor mounts – 0

Tiger mounts – 0

Anzu mounts – 1 (ages ago with my druid when it required a druid)

Rivendare’s mount – 0

White Hawkstriders – 0

ZG, Sethekk Halls, Stratholme and Magister’s Terrace runs: I don’t want to think about it

It’s also why I have been slowly chipping away at the Grand List of Things To Do. Some of them I have crossed off the list, like Loremaster. Others, well…

Let’s just say that sometimes an achievement gets under my skin. I just want to get it done. So it is with the Higher Learning achievement. For those who may not be familiar with the achievement, it requires that you read a series of rare books around Dalaran. They spawn at specific spots, but at any given time there is no guarantee of the “right” book spawning. You are much more likely to be reading an issue of Kirin Tor monthly (back issues, sadly) or any other of a number of flavour books. Most of them are pretty funny! But most of them also won’t reward me with an incredibly magely pet.

Who knew he was so into books?

The pursuit of this achievement is well-documented and a lot of people want it, so there are even channels dedicated to people sharing book info. On most servers it’s “bookclub.” The bookclub channel on Moonrunner has proven incredibly helpful to me – I’ve found at least two books because of it and have dutifully reported the books when I find them, too. I’ve been working on this achievement since I knew that it existed, but perhaps I lacked the singleminded dedication I have recently found.

I just need one last book. It’s the one above the Threads of Fate shop. There’s a cute water elemental and a gnome there who are washing clothes, and it’s just out on the balcony from the shoe shine fellow. I had rarely even seen a junk book spawn here when I was running between spawn points. Now it is the only book I need, and it vexes me. You can imagine my consternation the other night when a call went out in the bookclub channel:

“Enchantment book up above tailoring shop.” He didn’t mean the tailoring shop, really. He meant the Threads of Fate. My book! Guess where I was? The FROZEN THRONE.

I may or may not have burst out into Vent, “YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME.” Whether it was a consequence of my distraction or not, the raid wiped within the next twenty seconds or so. It’s impossible to prove causality, here. Just that my achievement may or may not have been involved. I ported to Dalaran as soon as we HAD wiped…but I was too late. The book was gone.

I'm a mage. Being a bibliophile is practically in the job description!

Voss thinks my book was directly involved. “How could you wipe the raid because of a book?!” he says at our next break, waving his arms.

“I did not wipe the raid because of a book!” I tell him.

“You distracted everyone with your book!”

“Look, some people wipe the raid by standing in fire, surely I get one LITERARY FREEBIE.”

Finishing off this achievement hasn’t been all bad. I’m often one of a crowd of people waiting… usually all of them mages. Yesterday a troll mage said something to me that I obviously didn’t understand, so I had Voss log onto his Horde warrior to ask what he’d said. It turned out that he had been singing Business Time to me. We got to chatting a little bit. I’m sure we would be friends, except that he’s a troll. In summary: searching for this last book is bringing me closer to random strangers, but wiping the raid.

My priorities are absolutely in line, I don’t know what you’re talking about.

Well, to be fair, I didn’t know Rivendare’s mount was going to drop from the NEW Rivendare. The list was meant to be more a “mounts I am trying to get and some are going away,” though. The ones that steadfastly refuse to drop (which is actually all of them…)

Jana has Higher Learning. She got it the old fashioned way: waiting hours and hours for a book to suddenly appear. I hope I was doing something else at the time otherwise I might start to feel pathetic.

I think the worst way I’ve wiped a raid is by deathgripping Sindragosa on accident while I was DPSing her. I don’t think that’s as embarrassing as tanking Lich King with frost resist gear on.

Haha, your list looks so much like mine! the past weeks me and my mates have tried farming ZG and MgT for mounts and pets and ended up with an impressive 0 on all accounts so far! also, I still don’t have half of those damn books and after 33 baron tries or so, I gave up trying!!

The last book you need is the first one I got. Little did I know that once I got it I was going to spend 3 mos staring at bookshelves while signed up for the dungeon finder on various characters.

Seriously the time invested vs benefit gained ratio is way off. Although when the little XT pet was screaming constantly in Dalaran being able to port to the Inner Sanctum was a welcome relief to my ears.

[…] on an achievement-related incident which may or may not have contributed to a wipe, but was definitely related to some literature. Curious? Hop on over to find out what’s up. Suffice it to say I found some startling […]

My mage got this achievement a while back. She’d been doing the “randomly check spots til they appear” thing for a year or so, then she got to only needing three at the same time I started my latest work contract. Work at home. On my computer. Next to the other computer I’m not using to work on. See where this is going?

It only took me a week to get the other three books I needed, camping one spot at a time. I love that magely pet!